re: If secession was legal then what right did the North have to keep the South in the USA?

quote:

---

It didn't have the same historical allegiance as the north and couldn't be easily controlled so the North started measures to weaken the south economically out of fear the south would grow stronger and be a tool of Britain etc

---

That is simply not true. Slavery as an economic problem WAS the main component in the problem. To suggest otherwise is like pissing in the wind.

The Southern baws were not some sort of aristocrtaic idealistic types. They were cold hard business men and slaves and agricultural endeavors was money to them. They needed more lands in the west to farm . Places like Kansas with really good farm land particularly in the Eastern part was a big deal for them...as was the Eastern part of the Indian territory (Oklahoma).

Your assertion that an alliance with Europe was becoming problematic is pure fantasy as well. Yes Europe liked cheap American cotton, but they liked the finished product even better and the North was churning out clothes and fabric and other textiles. Also Great Britain abolishes slavery in June 1833 and the British public was not too keen on allying with a country who had as one of its founding tenants the preservation of slavery. The French were more complicated - see Maximilien in Mexico 1864-1867

The Civil War just like most wars are about money and territory- economics. Slavery was a bad deal economically for the North.....it was not all that good overall for most Southerners in that it depressed wages for poorer whites. The sales job that the Southern political class pulled on its own people is one of the best in history.

The North were no angels in this either. They put up killer tariffs on cotton . 75% of the Federal Government atone time was funded by this sectional tariff . Very little makes it way back to the Southern States.

But who picked the cotton - slaves
Who was depressing the wages of poor white people in the South - slaves
Who was deprssing the wages of incoming immigrants - slaves

What was the reason for "Bloody Kansas" slavery ( South thought that the new stats should not be allowed to ban slavery

What really pissed off the North was the Fugitive Slave Act - now they could go to jail for helping runaway slaves . They were forced to rat out to Southern bounty hunters

All of this has a common thing - SLAVERY

Stop the bullshite of States Rights. It was not that, it was the fact that the South could not bare to see that the institution was dying out nationally and the Federal Government which under its enumerated powers had the power to regulate commerce was no longing keen on expanding an institution that a majority of the states and people no longer wanted.